\begin{abstract}
  Nowadays, both the wind power and shale gas industries have
  been developing quickly and receiving significant attention in the
  media. Since wind and natural gas are competing sources of
  electricity generation, in order to guide policy, it would be useful
  to have an idea of how many jobs are created by these two competing
  resources.

  In this paper, we use a panel econometric model to estimate the
  historical job-creating performance of wind versus that of shale oil
  and gas. The model is estimated using monthly county level data in
  Texas from 2001 to 2011.  We collect data on the historical
  employment, number of directional/hydraulic fracturing wells
  drilled, and new wind capacity built in each county each month and
  then study the relationship between them. Both distributed lag and
  spatial panel models have been used based on different data
  dependence assumptions.

  Despite different estimation methodologies, the results are quite
  consistent. Both first difference and GMM methods show that shale
  development and well drilling activity have brought strong
  employment to Texas: 77 short-term jobs or 6.4 FTE jobs per
  well. Given 5482 new directional/fractured wells were drilled in
  Texas in 2011, about 35000 FTE jobs would have been created. Its
  impact on wage is not rather distinct. The wage increases 30 cents
  in month 4 and month 9 after each well completion.

  All the estimations show that the impact of wind industry
  development on employment is not significant from zero. Its impact
  on wage rises gradually after the construction and peaks about
  one year later. 13 cents are added to the wage in month 10 to 12.
\end{abstract}

